Writing prompts are a great way to develop skills and learn to write quickly. This article describes the author’s reasons for participating in one type of story prompts.

There once was a website called Storypraxis. Perhaps you remember it with fondness. If you subscribed to the site, you would receive a “writing prompt” every 3 days. Your job was simple. Write quickly for 20 to 30 minutes using the word or phrase as stimulus for a short, short story or a poem. No editing. No deep thinking. Just write that story and submit it. If the story was good, you would be featured in that month’s “magazine”.

I participated (participate was one of the prompt words!) and found it the most simulating and exciting writing exercise. Here is why. Learn more.

Formatting a written piece is important for the reader. This article helps us to understand why.

I’m told we speak at 100 to 300 words per minute and hear at 900 to1600 words per minute. Women tend to speak more words during the day than men. This could be because they are constantly repeating what they have said to men. No doubt women hear much better than men but we all tend to tune out about 75% of what we hear. So 25% retention is considered good for the spoken word.

It does a body good to take a trip back in time and remember. This article is very interesting.

The most interesting World Series occurred in 1918. The Cubs were playing, but that’s not what made that particular series stand out from all the others before and since. Over 100,000 Americans had already lost their lives in World War I; baseball players were needed in battle rather than in the stadiums. The series was ordered by the government to be finished before labor-day, making players available for the draft. Game one between the Cubs and Red Sox was played in Chicago, but not in Wrigley. The series had been moved to bigger Comiskey Park. Wrigley existed, but by a different name (Weeghman Park). Learn more.

This is one woman’s adoption story. It begins the day her birth mother found her.

The letter from my birth mother arrived six days before my 22nd birthday. A month earlier, I had packed all my worldly possessions into a sun-blistered Mazda and moved to Sydney to live with my boyfriend of four years. But we’d broken up three weeks later, and I found myself alone, hating the corporate law firm where I temped as a paralegal, but dreading even more the return to the filthy eight-bedroom frat house I’d wound up in after the split. One of my revolving cast of roommates casually tossed it to me: a giant white envelope postmarked from Beijing.

“What is it?” he asked, clicking on the TV before I responded. Learn more.

Do you plot your entire book before you write it? Do you prefer to sit down and write and see what happens? Whatever the method of choice, this writer provides some great tips on the writing process.

Writers have many methods for developing their story. Some are very methodical and create detailed outlines. Some have a spreadsheet that lists chapters, summaries and potential word counts. While others use writing software such as Scrivener to write and organize their thoughts.

Me, I’ve tried a little of all of these methods. More than likely as my writing matures I will choose one I like best. Having some idea of where the story will go is good and all of these tools can guide the way. But there is something mystical that happens when you sit down to write a scene and your characters take on a life of their own. Before you know it they are having conversations or going through a crisis you didn’t have outlined. It’s as if they jump off the page and take over your well thought-out plot line. Relax, let them go and see what happens. Your story may take on a life that is better than the one you had planned. When the characters shut up, reread your scene. If it has taken you off track, but you like what’s happening, ask yourself, what happens next? Then dive right in to your new story line. Read more.

Do you like to save time? We all do. This article instructs the reader how to link all social media platforms for time management.

We’re told to be on as many platforms for social media as we can get our fist around. Not every social media is for every person and I would more encourage you to find two or three you really love and connects you with different people through each platform.

As writers, we have themes that we use in our writing whether we recognize it or not. This article talks about finding out what those themes are.

For this blog post, we’re going to do a little digging. The title mentions seven staples. In the case of this blog post, by staple, I mean the commodity of theme, or something regular that is unique to you and your writing. One definition of staple, according to Merriam-Webster, is “a chief commodity or production of a place.”

In this case, “commodity” means your regular markers as a storyteller, and “place” means your work as a whole. Learn more.